Legacies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,37

about her schoolwork, not her spellwork. “Um . . . I flunked my magician test,” she finally said. “You remember?” You practically had an entire cow right there and I woke up in the Infirmary? Hello?

He stared at her for a long moment in silence, and Spirit had the crazy feeling that he was about to tell her that she was mistaken, and even the thought that he might struck her as so unreasonably funny that she had to take a deep breath to keep from laughing.

“Well, don’t worry about it, my dear. I’m sure it will all sort itself out eventually,” Doctor Ambrosius said with grave politeness. “You just . . . continue to apply yourself to your studies like a good child.”

This time he did pat her, but on the arm, and he might have meant it to be consoling, but it just raised goose bumps. How could he have forgotten? He’d known her name, after all.

Maybe he was twins.

Maybe he was several fries short of a Happy Meal.

Maybe being a magician drives you crazy eventually. Oh hey. Something for everyone here to look forward to. Insanity. Once again she fought back the demented urge to laugh out loud.

Maybe that explained why all the teachers were so weird.

All right you slackers, playtime’s over.” Mr. Wallis’s voice jerked Spirit out of her reverie. His tone was contemptuous. He almost seemed to be taunting them.

She rose to her feet again and walked out onto the practice floor, pulling on her mask as she went. This time Mr. Wallis paired her with a boy named Dylan Williams. Spirit winced inwardly. Dylan was a year older than she was and had been taking kendo for three semesters. He was good and he was fast. And he liked to hurt people.

Normally she’d just complain about him to the instructor. But normally the instructor would see what Dylan was doing and stop it. She knew that wouldn’t happen here.

Maybe Mr. Wallis expects me to stop him myself?

It was a new idea, and one she didn’t like very much. It made it seem as if Oakhurst was some kind of cage-match, and only the strongest would survive to graduate. But it made sense—in a warped kind of way—if what Doctor Ambrosius had told her and Loch when they arrived about being at risk from evil magicians was true. If she could believe anything he’d said that day. If he wasn’t crazy.

Mr. Wallis gave them the order to begin, and Dylan raised his sword and began to circle her, his teeth bared in a predatory smile.

She couldn’t stop him—not today. She wasn’t good enough yet. But she was learning fast. And for now she’d count it a victory just to stay out of his way.

To stay out of everybody’s way.

SIX

This was her third year at Oakhurst, and like her Dad always used to call Wednesday “Hump Day”—because you were halfway through the week and over the hump and it was all downhill from there and the weekend was on its way—Camilla thought of the Halloween Dance as the “Hump Dance,” because it meant they were almost all the way through the year. Halloween meant there’d be the cold weather that she loved after growing up in Florida, and it would start snowing soon so they couldn’t do most of the outdoor sports, and there’d be a whole week of no classes at Christmas, and for Christmas they all got something from their Wish Lists in addition to some candy.

Yeah, okay, maybe it was lame. But it was also better than home. The one time she’d called the Halloween Dance the “Hump Dance” out loud, though, she’d gotten laughed at, so she’d never done it again. Sometimes she just wasn’t as good at making the words come out right as everyone else was—Camilla knew what she meant, but between her brain and her mouth, it just ended up sounding stupid. Sometimes she thought that when she got her powers working all the way right and could take on her animal shape, she’d just turn into something—a wolf, maybe, or an eagle—and just never turn back.

Having Transformation was a really cool Mage Gift, and she’d been excited when Mr. Bowman explained to her that someday she’d be able to turn into any animal she wanted to. But it was also dangerous, because if you got stuck halfway you could die, so she still had a lot of practicing to do before she did it for the first time.